Wicked Weed Serenity 1st Bottle Release GABF Gold Medal Winner

Asheville, NC – On march 1st, Wicked Weed Brewing will release their first bottled brew, 100% Brettanomyces Serenity Farmhouse Ale during an event held at the brewery.

Bottles will go on sale at 12pm, Saturday, March 1st at the Wicked Weed Brewpub on 91 Biltmore Avenue in downtown Asheville, North Carolina. Patrons will be limited to a purchase of four bottles per person at $10.95 per bottle. In addition to bottle sales, Serenity will be tapped at 12pm for enjoyment on premise. There will be Serenity gear for purchase and, weather permitting, live music. Wicked Weed anticipates bottles will run out by 4pm on the day of the sale.

Serenity was the brewery’s first 100% Brettanomyces beer, and only 8 months after opening its doors, Wicked Weed, received the Gold Medal at The Great American Beer Festival for American Style Brett Beer in 2013. Runners up were well known brewing powerhouse Russian River Brewing out of Santa Rosa, CA who took silver, followed by rising star, Crooked Stave Brewery from Denver, CO who received bronze.

It would stand to reason that winning such a coveted award would be the motivation to bottle this particular beer, but according to Head Brewer, Luke Dickinson, bottling sour beers was always the plan.

“Initially, it came down to space. We had the separate facility for brewing sours with a small available space for a small six head filler.” says Luke.

Walt Dickinson, Head of Brewing Operations, added “We also felt that to make sours with the quality we wanted, we had to brew in large quantities. We wanted to build a robust sour program and that meant having options for blending. “Sours and wilds also taste best out of a bottle where they age extremely well and gain complexity.”

To further improve the impact of their first bottling, Brewers Luke and Walt made the decision to import a new bottle format from Europe.

“We are using a unique 500ml champagne style bottle. We are the first brewery in the U.S. to utilize this style and size bottle. Much like our beer, we want to stand out and push the envelope, and that means being intentional with our bottles and labels,” says Luke. “It will also give us the ability to employ secondary fermentation within the bottle, and build up a good vintage collection here.”

About Wicked Weed Brewing
Wicked Weed Brewing is an Asheville, North Carolina based brewpub that always hosts 20+ beers on tap including hop forward, west coast style ales, open fermented belgians, and barrel aged sour beers. Opened in December 2012, Wicked Weed is striving towards becoming the largest producer of barrel aged beers in the Southeastern US. Wicked Weed Brewing was awarded a Gold Medal at the Great American Beer Festival for 100% Brettanomyces Serenity Farmhouse Ale in 2013. In addition to Serenity, Wicked Weed is known for producing Freak of Nature Double IPA, Coolcumber Ale, Tyranny Red Ale, and Black Angel Cherry Sour. Most recently, Wicked Weed began small scale statewide distribution to major metropolitans in North Carolina.